She attended the Mary Datchelor School in Camberwell[1] and went on to read Modern History at St Anne's College, Oxford.
In addition to these roles, she also worked as social worker in a psychiatric hospital in Worcester and it was her experiences here, and as a patient of such an institution, that formed the basis for her debut novel The Ha-Ha (1961).
The novel, which explores schizophrenia, received considerable critical acclaim, and was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
[5] Dawson continued to explore similar themes throughout the 1960s and 1970s via novels such as The Cold Country, Strawberry Boy and A Field of Scarlet Poppies.
"Jennifer Dawson's prose is as jagged and angular as her tone on behalf of the marginalised—women, immigrants, the poor, the sick—is resenting and bitter," wrote Valentine Cunningham when reviewing Judasland in The Observer in 1989.